Nell: Why do the Leap Ambassadors believe now is the right time to introduce the Performance Imperative (PI) to the nonprofit sector? There have been past attempts to move the sector toward outcomes and performance. What makes this effort and this timing different?

Lowell: We don’t know if we’ll break through with this effort. But the 70+ members of the Ambassadors Community are committed to giving it our all, because we believe that performance matters more than ever. The social and public sectors are increasingly steering resources toward efforts that are based on a sound analysis of the problem, grounded assumptions about how an organization’s activities can lead to the desired change, and leadership that embraces continuous improvement.

High performance is all too rare in our sector today. In fact, we don’t even have a commonly accepted definition of the term “high performance.” The PI is our attempt to create that common definition and then start the process of creating guideposts to help nonprofits who are motivated to improve their performance for the clients and causes they serve.

We’re not aware of any other effort devoted to this mission-critical topic that has engaged so many top nonprofit executives, funders, and thought leaders as co-creators. Perhaps even more important, the PI goes beyond the typical focus on helping nonprofit leaders do things right. When leaders do things right, they can achieve strong operational performance but not necessarily meaningful results for beneficiaries. To achieve the results embodied in their mission statements, leaders must go the extra mile, through diligent internal monitoring and external evaluation, to ensure they’re also doing the right things.

Nell: Does the PI apply to any and all nonprofit organizations? Is it a measuring stick that any size and domain area nonprofit should use, or are there certain types of nonprofits for which this really works?

Lowell: We believe the insights in this document are most immediately applicable to nonprofit organizations with budgets of $3 million or more. But many of the basic management principles apply to organizations of any size, just in less-intensive ways. Some of the details have a special focus on organizations that provide direct services. We believe the overarching framework is relevant for organizations of almost any type.

Nell: What will keep the Performance Imperative from becoming a dusty document rather than a movement? What does success look like for this movement and how will you measure whether that happens?

Lowell: Let’s face it: The topic of high performance is not a lightning-fast meme that will spread like a left shark or right-wing conspiracy theory. It’s a slow, complex idea that will require patient, methodical work to advance. Hence the importance of the Leap Ambassadors Community, a group of leaders who care deeply about high performance and are willing to share the gospel with trusted colleagues and peers.

We believe that when leaders with strong beliefs and passion coalesce around a common purpose, they can build a collective power and influence to drive positive change. They can create an infectious enthusiasm to pull other like-minded players into a growing community of action. That can only happen when you take the time to build relationships, trust, quality work, and collective pride in that work. Overall, we’ll judge our success based on a) to what extent the PI becomes an established framework for increasing the understanding and expectation of high performance as a critical pathway to greater societal impact; and b) to what extent the Leap Ambassadors Community demonstrates itself as a thoughtful, knowledgeable, aligned community of leaders and earns respect, collaboration, and support from prominent players in the field.

To be more concrete about how we will know if we’re on the right track, we’ve established metrics for the growth and engagement of the Ambassadors Community as well as for the value of the PI itself. Here a few of the milestones we hope to achieve over the next year:

100‐150 ambassadors have jelled as a community and are truly aligned with the community’s purpose.

At least 25 nonprofits commit to using the PI to assess their strengths and needs; increase the board’s focus on mission effectiveness; improve their professional-development and organization-building efforts; or otherwise use the PI as a North Star to guide their journey toward high performance.

Three to five foundations adopt the PI for themselves and their grantees, and they begin to apply the PI in their grant decisions and grantee support.

Three charity ratings or information providers build the PI into their offerings.

At least two vendors prominently use the PI in their suites of products and services.

At least two prominent nonprofit management and leadership programs incorporate the PI as a core staple in their products and services.

At least one institution creates a prominent award aligned with the PI or adapts an existing award.

Nell: Where do funders and regulators fit into this push for higher performance in the sector? One of the things that holds nonprofits back from high performance is an inability to spend the money it takes to achieve high performance (money for infrastructure, evaluation, staff, etc.). How do we fix that and where does fixing that fit into the movement’s plans?

Lowell: Funders and regulators can and must play a role. Right now, I’m helping a multiservice agency transition from providing compassionate care to ensuring that its clients achieve meaningful, measurable, sustainable life outcomes. The agency is trying to live the PI. But here’s the sad reality: The journey toward high performance is making the organization’s development challenges harder, on net. That’s because there are so few funders who understand the value of high performance—and even fewer who reward it.

To make the leap to high performance, nonprofits need creative funders willing to think big with them—not just ask for more information on results. They need funders who understand that making the leap requires more than program funding and more than the typical “capacity-building” grant. They need funders who make multi-year investments in helping nonprofit leaders strengthen their management muscle and rigor.

That’s why we’re so supportive of the work of Results for America and the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, organizations that are helping governments to base funding decisions on evidence and results. And that’s why the Ambassadors Community is developing the case for high performance that we can start bringing directly to funders. Bridgespan Group Co-Founder and former Social Innovation Fund Director Paul Carttar and Center for Effective Philanthropy President Phil Buchanan are co-leading a working group of ambassadors to build the case for funders. They are planning to convene a dozen+ foundation leaders to help flesh out the most effective arguments and evidence we can assemble to persuade funders that they have a better chance of accomplishing their missions if they support their grantees’ pursuit of performance.

I’m really excited to announce today’s launch of the Performance Imperative. The Performance Imperative is a detailed definition, created by a community of nonprofit thought leaders, of a high-performance nonprofit. The hope is with a clear definition of high-performance we can strengthen nonprofit efforts to achieve social change.

As we all know, we are living in a time of growing wealth inequality, crumbling institutions, political divides, and the list of social challenges goes on. The burden of finding solutions to these challenges increasingly falls to the nonprofit sector. So “good work” is no longer enough. We need to understand — through rigor and evidence — which solutions are working and which are not.

The Performance Imperative was created by the Leap Ambassadors Community, a network of 70+ nonprofit thought leaders and practitioners of which I am a member. The group emerged from the 2013 After the Leap conference, which brought nonprofit, philanthropic and government leaders together to create a higher-performing nonprofit sector. The group is determined to lead the fundamental, and critical, shift towards a more effective nonprofit sector.

The Performance Imperative defines nonprofit high performance as “the ability to deliver—over a prolonged period of time—meaningful, measurable, and financially sustainable results for the people or causes the nonprofit is in existence to serve.”

The Performance Imperative further describes seven organizational pillars that lead to high performance:

Over the next several months I will write a blog series that digs into each of these 7 pillars to understand what each one means for a nonprofit organization and to examine case studies of how other nonprofit leaders have approached the pillars. And next week on the blog I’ll interview one of the founders of this movement toward high performance.

Although the Performance Imperative is targeted toward $3M+ nonprofits, it can also be a benchmark upon which any social change nonprofit can measure itself. Nonprofit boards and staffs can use the Performance Imperative as a north star to guide their journey toward higher performance.

To learn more about the Performance Imperative, watch the video below (or here), or download the complete Performance Imperative here.

The critical necessity of a high performing nonprofit sector is clear. We no longer have the luxury of benevolent good works that sit aside the business of our country. Now is the time to find solutions that really work and develop the leadership and sustainability to spread them far and wide.

As Mario Morino, founder of the Leap Ambassador Community has said, “If we don’t figure out how to build high performing nonprofits, nothing else matters. This is the last mile. Our nation depends on it.”

We live in an age of an (often sickening) glut of information. Sometimes just thinking about Twitter, Facebook, Google, or BuzzFeed makes me really tired. And I love technology and media. But they can be absolutely overwhelming.

I recently finished Nate Silver’s phenomenal book, The Signal and the Noise, in which he offers a new way to approach our age of information overload. Silver’s book is about how we can better predict things like weather, economic fluctuations, and climate change by finding the right “signal” amidst the exponentially expanding body of data, or “noise.”

Silver describes how our current Internet age is very similar to life after the invention of the printing press, when books were suddenly cheap and everywhere. The result of this sudden enormous increase in the availability of information was, unfortunately, 200 years of holy war. Although Silver doesn’t believe we’re headed for another 200 year war, he argues that we must understand the parallels and the dangers of too much information. As Silver puts it:

We face danger whenever information growth outpaces our understanding of how to process it. The last forty years of human history imply that it can still take a long time to translate information into useful knowledge, and that if we are not careful, we may take a step back in the meantime.

In other words, we need to figure out how to organize the firehose of information that faces us everyday. I don’t know exactly how to go about that, but for my own sanity I have developed a few strategies.

First is taking regular time away from all of the information just to process and think alone, without screens, books, or chatter. We all must claim our very real need to turn off the noise and look inside for the meaning, the right approach, the way forward.

Second is seeking out the past. I was a history major in college and still love the subject, so my predisposition when I am overwhelmed is to look at how we approached things in the past. There is great peace there. In particular, I love the weekly email from Brain Pickings where writer Maria Popova delves into the works of past writers to help understand our world today. Aside from finding new things to read, it is incredibly comforting to realize the struggles we face today are really not all that new.

And finally, I believe that dissent holds promise for finding shelter from the information glut. One of the things Silver warns against (and we see this everyday) is that in an age of information overload, people tend to shut out things that are at odds with their opinions or experience. Our country’s current deep political divide is an example of this. So we need to break down those walls and surround ourselves with people who make us pause and who make us think. We need to seek out people who share our values, but not necessarily our life experience, education, politics, income level, or opinion on how the world should work.

We don’t have to succumb to the exhausting deluge of information. As Callie Oettinger put it, “The Internet is ours to shape. We can’t let the howling spread.”

The board of directors can be the bane of a nonprofit leader’s existence. Call me biased, but like anything, I believe a strategic approach is the solution.

I have assembled a suite of tools to help you strengthen your board and make them much more useful to you. Because the good news is you don’t have to sit around and hope your board sees the light. It is within your power to make your board more effective.

To help in that endeavor, here are the board-building tools:

How to Build a Groundbreaking Board On-Demand WebinarThis webinar will help you develop a groundbreaking board that will: define what it should do and how, recruit the right people, drive strategy for the overall organization, use money more effectively, strengthen the organization, and open your nonprofit to greater support, awareness and connection in your community.

How to Build a Fundraising Board On-Demand WebinarThis webinar will help you create a system for getting each individual member involved, give them clear money raising responsibilities, provide them many options for bringing money in the door, and get them excited and engaged in the future of the organization.

10 Traits of a Groundbreaking Board BookThis book defines the 10 traits that characterize a groundbreaking nonprofit board and describes how to move your board toward becoming one. In creating a groundbreaking board, your nonprofit will enjoy greater financial sustainability, more effective use of resources, and ultimately more social change.

Build An Engaged Board Bundle combines all three tools (the two webinars and the book) into one bundle so that you can hit the ground running.

In today’s Social Velocity interview, I’m talking with Josh Silver, Director of Represent.US, an organization building a movement to pass tough anti-corruption laws in cities and states across America. His local approach to political and social change is a fascinating model. Josh is a veteran election and media reform executive and served as the campaign manager for the successful 1998 Arizona Clean Elections ballot initiative campaign. He is also the co-founder and former CEO of Free Press, a leading media and technology reform advocacy organization. He also served as the Director of Development for the cultural arm of the Smithsonian Institution.

If you want to read past interviews in the Social Velocity interview series go here.

Nell: With Represent.Us you take a city­-by­-city or state­-by­-state approach to political reform, instead of a nationwide approach. Why do you think a local approach holds more promise?

Josh: It’s all about momentum. Every poll available has shown that Americans of all political affiliations — conservatives, progressives, and independents alike — support tough, new anti-corruption laws. But, as with so many other issues, these wildly popular reforms are going nowhere fast in today’s Washington.

If we want to break the gridlock at the national level, we need to be pragmatic about where we focus our efforts. Rather than throw ourselves at a brick wall in Congress, we’re taking this fight to the thousands of cities and 27 states where we can use the ballot initiative process to bypass compromised local legislatures and put tough, new anti­-corruption laws directly to a public vote.

Focusing on city and state initiatives is both good policy and good politics. In policy terms, many state and local anti­-corruption laws are even more out of date than federal law and in significant need of reform. We can and should do everything in our power to make the exchange of money and favors for political influence illegal at every level of government.

In political terms, using a local ballot initiative strategy will allow us to start racking up wins immediately, showing an understandably cynical public that change is possible and building momentum for national reform. While self­-interested politicians might be reluctant to change the system that got them elected, the public will overwhelmingly vote for a local Anti­-Corruption Act if given the opportunity.

Advocates of marriage equality and marijuana legalization have seen huge success with the same strategy. 20 years ago, both issues faced seemingly insurmountable odds in Washington. By picking smart targets at the state and local level, they’ve managed to redraw the political map and set their campaigns on the path to national victory.

We’re running the same playbook, and it’s already working. On November 4, 2014, Tallahassee, Florida passed the first municipal Anti­-Corruption Act in the United States by a two to one margin. Now, campaigns for new Anti­-Corruption Acts are already in the works for twelve cities and two states in 2015 and 2016.

Nell: As you mentioned, your approach is part of a larger state­-by­-state reform trend, with movements like the state­-by-state legalization of gay marriage and of marijuana. Why does the state­-by-state approach work now and will we ever go back to federal­ level reform?

Josh: The state­-by­-state approach works because it allows Americans to take matters into their own hands when politicians refuse to act. Instead of worrying about local politicians carving out loopholes for themselves and their parties, the People can craft their own comprehensive reform plan, gather the signatures necessary to place it on the ballot, and put their local Anti­-Corruption Act directly to a public vote. Given the popularity of the reforms we’re talking about, these local Acts are very likely to pass, building the movement from the ground up and creating a domino effect which will spread from state to state and eventually Washington, DC.

Passing a statewide ballot initiative can fundamentally change a state’s political culture. It sends a clear message to every elected official in the state, including that state’s federal delegation. Every time we pass a statewide anti­-corruption act, it makes it possible for federal candidates in that state to run for Congress and win without the backing of big money special interests. So, every state we win means more members of Congress who support comprehensive nationwide reform. Once we’ve attained a critical mass of support in the states, federal level reform is inevitable.

Nell: A big part of what you do involves creating coalitions of strange bedfellows, for example Tea Party loyalists and progressives. How do you circumvent our current environment of the dismissive or openly hostile discourse between opposing viewpoints and get people to find some common ground and work together?

Josh: Americans self-­identify as roughly one-third Conservative, one-third Progressive and one-third Independent. Maintaining a fiercely cross­-partisan campaign is critical to our long-term success — winning national reform is impossible with only one-third of the country behind you.

We’ve found that the people fighting at the grassroots are sick of the gridlock in Washington, and much more willing to work across partisan lines than their members of Congress. While our supporters might not agree on everything, they’re united behind the fundamental belief that government — no matter how large or how small — must put the needs of the People first. Public policy decisions should be made based on merit, not lobbyists and campaign contributions. Our supporters are willing to put their partisan differences aside and work together to make that happen.

The effort behind the Tallahassee Anti­-Corruption Act is a perfect example of this principle in action. It was spearheaded by the chair of the Florida Tea Party Network, the former president of the Florida League of Women Voters, the chairman of Florida Common Cause, and a leader of Integrity Florida, an independent state ethics watchdog. This politically diverse coalition played an enormous role in the Tallahassee victory. As the editorial board of the Tallahassee Democrat, the local paper of record, put it: “When you have representatives of the League of Women Voters, Common Cause, Integrity Florida and the state Tea Party Network all aligned against you, it might be time to reassess your position.”

Nell: You just won your first victory by passing an anti­-corruption code in the city of Tallahassee, FL. Let’s be idealistic for a second. What if you are able to log victories like Tallahassee’s in cities and states across the country. Is there a critical number of places before the movement becomes truly national? And then do you look at federal reforms? Or is the end goal every city and every state?

Josh: There is no “magic number” — Each state­-level win makes national reform more likely. Every statewide victory means more Congressional delegations from states with an Anti­-Corruption Act, and more public pressure on politicians to get on the right side of this issue or risk losing their seats.

While winning a federal Anti-­Corruption Act is a major goal, bringing reform to every city and state is just as important. This movement is bigger than any one law — it’s about fundamentally changing the political culture of the United States. It’s about demonstrating that Americans will not tolerate laws putting self-interest before the public good, and ensuring a government committed to serving the People at every level.

It’s not a question of idealism. This movement is real, and has no plans of slowing down. We’re planning to bring local Anti­-Corruption acts to 12 cities and 2 states in 2015 and 2016. We are already working with local law firms, political strategists and grassroots activists to make it happen.

If you’d like to be part of it, visit represent.us to learn more and join the campaign.

I’ve been leading several strategic planning efforts lately, and I am always amazed at the nonprofit sector’s general fear (borderline hatred) of strategic planning. I get it, strategic planning has traditionally been done so badly that many have just given up on the idea altogether. But that’s a mistake.

Without a long-term strategy for what your nonprofit is trying to accomplish and how you will marshal people and money to reach it, you are just spinning your wheels.

Rather than be a feared and misunderstood exercise, strategic planning can actually be distilled into 7 key questions. Now granted, these are really challenging questions, but they can be the impetus for some thoughtful strategic decision-making among board and staff. These 7 questions must be tackled in the following order because they build on each other.

The 7 questions are:

What is Our Marketplace Map?
As a nonprofit you will be most successful when your 1)core competencies (what you do better than anyone else) uniquely position you to address 2)a community need, apart from your 3)competitorsor collaborators. So the first step in strategic planning is to map those three areas and figure out where your nonprofit lies. But because you cannot create a strategic plan in a vacuum, you need to do market research to see how future trends might impact your place in the market.

What is Our Theory of Change?
A Theory of Change is an argument for why your nonprofit exists. It helps you articulate who your target populations are and how you employ your core competencies to change outcomes for them. It is a fundamental building block to any strategic plan because if you don’t know what you are ultimately trying to accomplish and for whom, how can you possibly chart a future course?

What Are Our Vision and Mission?These two statements are NOT feel-good rallying cries. Rather they are instrumental elements of your future direction. Your nonprofit’s Vision relates to the “Outcomes” section of your Theory of Change and describes how you want the world to be different because of your work. And the Mission relates to the “Activities” section of your Theory of Change and describes your day-to-day work to move toward that Vision. Any good strategic plan takes a hard look at the two statements and revises them as necessary.

What is Our Mission and Money Mix?
Once you’ve articulated your Theory of Change you need to analyze your current programs to understand how well each one contributes to 1) your Theory of Change, and 2) the financial viability of your organization. This allows you to understand where to grow, cut, or restructure programs to align with your strategy.

What Are Our 3-Year Goals?
Given your long-term Theory of Change, you then need to determine what 3-5 broad things (goals) you want to accomplish in the next 3-years. A strategic plan is too limited if it only charts 1-2 years out, and 4+ years is so far ahead that it’s probably meaningless. Typically those 3-5 goals break down like this: 1-3 program-related goals, 1 money goal, and 1 infrastructure (board, staff, systems) goal.

How Will We Finance The Plan?
A strategic plan is not effective without an attached financing plan because there is no action without money. So as part of the “money goal” of your strategic plan you must project how revenue and expenses (and capital investments if necessary) will flow to your nonprofit over the timeframe of the plan. This becomes your financing plan.

How Will We Operationalize It?
So many strategic plans have started out strong but withered on the vine because they had no implementation or monitoring plans attached. You have to include a way both to track the tactics necessary to achieve your goals and to monitor regularly whether the strategic plan is coming to fruition. Do not overlook this most critical (and often forgotten) piece.

There is a smart way to create nonprofit strategy. But it requires hard questions and the time and effort necessary to thoughtfully answer them.

If you’d like to learn more about the strategic planning process I take my clients through, visit the Social Velocity Strategic Planning page.

Recent studies of nonprofit donors have found that the majority aren’t interested in impact. But what if that current reality isn’t also future reality but rather an opportunity? What if just as Apple created a market for smartphones where one didn’t exist, we could create a market for social change funding where one currently doesn’t exist?

As I mentioned in my 10 Great Reads list for January, data wonk Caroline Fiennes reviewed recent studies on donor behavior and found that donors don’t increase their donations when shown nonprofit performance data. And Caroline is not alone, others have also argued that donors just don’t care about performance.

This could be depressing because if donors aren’t interested in the effectiveness of a nonprofit they won’t shift their money to the nonprofits more effective at creating social change. In other words, we have no hope of solving social problems if we can’t channel money to those entities that are actually solving those problems.

Apple is probably the most obvious example of a market maker, creating consumer demand where there was none. They have continually created innovative products for swooning consumers who previously had no idea they needed those products. Before creating the first iPhone prototype in 2006 Steve Jobs didn’t survey consumers to ask if they wanted their phone to surf the web, send emails, and take pictures. A majority of consumers would probably have said no. Rather, Apple saw a need that consumers didn’t yet know they had (what marketers call a “latent need”) and built a huge consumer base from scratch.

They were market makers, as Fred Vogelstein described in the New York Times Magazine:

Apple’s innovations have set off an entire rethinking of how humans interact with machines. It’s not simply that we use our fingers now instead of a mouse. Smartphones, in particular, have become extensions of our brains…Its technology is changing the way we learn in school, the way doctors treat patients, the way we travel and explore. Entertainment and media are accessed and experienced in entirely new ways.

Jobs and his team created a completely different marketplace, set of cultural norms, and way of interacting with the world around us.

In the world of social change we need a completely different marketplace, set of cultural norms, and way of channeling money. So we need to create the market.

We need to show funders that the current flow of money to social change efforts is not sufficient or efficient. If we truly want solutions to our social challenges, we must create an effective financial market for those solutions.

I believe that funders can be inspired to change their behavior. They have a latent desire to see their dollars actually achieve something. They have been so used to the lowest common denominator of giving based solely on reciprocity or emotion, but that can change.

As Harvard Business Review blogger Umair Haque explains, Apple’s success comes from their ability to rise above the common denominator and create something people love and truly (though they may not yet know it) want:

Most companies…don’t care about what they make. They merely care about what they sell. And so they…offer the people they call consumers the lowest common denominator designed by focus-group led committees at the everyday low price in malls full of stores full of shelves full of…other lowest common denominators designed by committee at the everyday low price. Nobody ever loved anybody who was merely trying to sell them something. Especially not the lowest common denominator. People love people—and organizations—that make their lives better. Even when those things are as simple as phones.

The data and the focus groups may say that donors don’t want impact. Yet. So its up to us to create the market. It is up to us to get donors to love the impact that makes clients’ lives, donors’ lives, and ultimately our communities better. It’s up to us to create demand for funding real social change.

January was a busy month. From more trends and predictions for the new year, to new ways of thinking about scale, to nonprofit performance measures and whether donors really care about them, to a return to farming, and a new giving app, there was lots to read in the world of social change.

Below are my picks for the 10 best reads in January. But please add to the list in the comments. And if you want a longer list, follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ or Facebook.

Since it was the first month of a new year, there were several prediction posts for the nonprofit sector. Rich Cohen’s predictions are very thoughtful, including declining slacktivism, an IRS crisis, continuing financial collapse of local governments and much more. The National Council of Nonprofits pulled together their list of 2015 trends facing the sector. And Kivi Leroux Miller created this nice infographic summarizing her 2015 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report.

Because a “social capital chasm” exists in the nonprofit sector it may not be possible for nonprofits to truly achieve organizational scale says Alice Gugelev and Andrew Stern writing in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. They urge social change leaders to look at scaling impact instead of organization. As they put it, “It’s time for nonprofit leaders to ask a more fundamental question than ‘How do you scale up?’ Instead, we urge them to consider…’What’s your endgame?'”

Writing on the Center for Effective Philanthropy blog, Phil Buchanan reminds us that it is not enough to move beyond overhead as a way to evaluate nonprofits: “What we need to focus on, of course, is not just de-emphasizing overhead ratios as a performance metric. We also need improvements in approaches to performance measurement. The reality is that donors often gravitate to overhead ratios when they can’t get their hands around anything else.”

But nonprofit evaluation wonk Caroline Fiennes might disagree. She takes a look at recent studies on how information about a nonprofit’s performance affects donor giving behavior. She rather depressingly finds that performance data doesn’t improve donations. In her review of three recent studies, Caroline finds “Donors appeared to use evidence of effectiveness as they would a hygiene factor: they seemed to expect all charities to have four-star ratings, and reduced donations when they were disappointed – but never increased them because they were never positively surprised.”

With elections behind him, President Obama’s January State of the Union address laid out his plans for his last two years in office. But he didn’t once mention the nonprofit sector even though the sector is key to the success of those plans, as Rick Cohen points out.

The new app, Charity Match that was developed by Intuit and the Gates Foundation, prompts people to make charitable donations based on their spending habits while they do their online banking.

While the family farm was once a thing of the past some Millennials are returning to farming, wanting “to find a way to live high-quality, sustainable lives, and help others do the same.”

As is their tradition, every year Bill and Melinda Gates release an annual letter about their philanthropy. And every year social change thinkers tear it apart. This year Chris Blattman from The Monkey Cage takes issue with the Gates’ assumption “that a few new technologies can make unprecedented and fundamental changes in poverty in 15 years.”

And finally, Michel Bachmann and Roshan Paul caution social changemakers to slow down and go deep in order to avoid burning out altogether. “The social entrepreneurship sector in many parts of the world is rife with accelerators…These organizations play an important role—there are good reasons for their existence. However, in this era where everything is accelerating, we’d like to put our hands up for the importance of deceleration. As the poet Tess Gallagher said: ‘You can’t go deep until you slow down.'” Amen!